


You've fallen so far away from me

by brightclam



Series: Fire spirit Mick [4]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Episode: s01e09 Left Behind, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Mild Gore, Ouch, Past Child Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, mentions of torture and brainwashing, remember that time len froze and broke off his own hand?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 09:56:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10409547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightclam/pseuds/brightclam
Summary: Really, Len should have known when he started getting the headaches. Then, when Kronos storms the Waverider's bridge, his link with Mick tears itself open again. Still, he doesn't realize Kronos is Mick until he's staring it in the face.





	

**Author's Note:**

> All dialogue is taken from here: http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewforum.php?f=557

 

\--------

 

He isn't really listening to what Jax is saying. His head hurts again; the headaches have become chronic since he left Mick.

 

He's forced to pay attention to his surroundings when they notice Kronos outside the ship. Kronos comes in the door, firing green energy blasts. They flee, and the waverider lurches and begins to take off.

 

He and Rip prepare to attack the bridge. Kronos and Rip exchange fire, the captain hiding behind the seats. Len joins him in blasting away at the intruder.

 

Then, the dormant link suddenly comes alive again: first there's a vague impression of darkness and heat, then a surge of agony. 

 

He can’t shoot, or move at all; the pain is all consuming. His vision flickers, getting dark around the edges. The armored hunter approaches Len, but he blacks out before Kronos reaches him.

 

\---------

 

He wakes up, head aching, shoulder sore from the sharp corner he's leaning against. His head still hurts, but it's his again, link silent. 

 

_ Did I imagine that? Or did the link really open? It shouldn't be able to.  _

 

He tries to stand up. He needs to figure out where he is, figure out a way to escape, get back to the team. He doesn't make it far before he’s jerked to a stop by his wrists. Strange looking handcuffs keep him chained to the railing of the hallway.

 

He hates being handcuffed. Hates it with a deep, all consuming hatred. The cuffs dig into his skin, making it impossible to ignore their presence.

 

If he can't move his hands, he can't fight, and he can't defend. The only thing he can do to protect himself while handcuffed is curl up and take the hits. It reminds him of being a kid, lying on the kitchen floor as his father kicks him in the ribs.

 

He tries to breath deep and even, reminds himself that his father isn't here, that there aren't any hands on him. Still; he can almost feel the bruises blooming on his stomach.

 

The armored man comes out of the shadows behind him, startling Len. He's already jumpy, far too aware that he’s trapped. He strains to look at Kronos as he approaches, and flinches as the man brushes past him roughly.

 

The silence, the anticipation of violence, is agonizing. He has to do something, even if it might irritate his captor.

 

“Uh, hello?”

 

The man leans over the computer and growls:

 

“A UFO sighting in Hub City in 1960 has created a time anomaly. Looks like your friends survived.”

 

Len’s fear only increases. This man seems calm, seems rational for now. But he knows how quickly cold men like that can turn violent.

 

He needs information. He needs to know why this man has captured him, needs to know how to react, how to stay alive.

 

“So uh, what's so special about me? Besides my sparkling personality. Back on the Waverider, you could have taken your boy Rip. But you took me instead. Why?”

 

The hunter doesn't respond. Silence is dangerous; this man should be simple, there to kill Rip. Instead, he's captured Len. There are ulterior motives here, and Len need to know  _ something _ about his captor. Anything, any little bit of information, would give him a foothold.

 

His fear is turning to panic. The cuffs rub against his skin, sending his thoughts spiraling, wearing down his control. He resorts to shouting, such an inelegant, inefficient tactic.

 

“If you're going to kill me you could at least tell me what's going on!”

 

The armored man turns to him, looming and silent. Len braces for an attack. 

 

The hunter growls, twisted through the helmet’s speakers:

 

“You should have figured it out by now.”

 

The hunter reaches up, slowly, and pulls off the helmet. Mick glares at him and growls again, voice no longer twisted:

 

“After all, I am supposed to be the dumb one.”

 

Of course, the first thing he feels is surprise. How is Mick here? Why is it Kronos? But then the realization hits, and with it comes the betrayal, like a punch in the guts.

 

_ Mick put me in cuffs. Mick chained me.  _

 

_ I told it how much being trapped scared me, how much it hurt me, it  _ **_felt_ ** _ my fear in my head every time the police cuffed me. I trusted it with that knowledge and it still put these on me. _

 

At least when Mick betrayed the team and brought the pirates onto the ship, it had a good reason. It was understandable; Len wanted to go home almost as much as it did.

 

But this betrayal is so personal, so different from before. 

 

Why would Mick do this? What could have changed it so much that it would use Len’s fear against him?

 

His voice shakes as he yells at Mick again:

 

“I think I deserve to know what the hell is going on!”

 

Mick looks at him then, eyes cold and condescending, and growls:

“You deserve nothing.” 

 

Len quails; Mick has been angry at him before, but never in this way. Not this empty rage, like there’s nothing left in it but anger. It reminds him of the death row inmates in prisons: hopeless, with nothing to live for but their hatred. Reflexively, he tries to push the closed link down farther; he’s terrified of feeling that hatred as well as seeing it.

 

“When I dropped you off in that forest, I meant to kill you. That was the plan.”

 

“You should've stuck with the plan and done me a favor.”

 

Len’s stomach lurches. Mick, despite its immortal lifespan, has never been interested in ending it early. Its sudden wish for death is almost as uncharacteristic as cuffing Len.

 

_ What happened to it? It must have been something terrible, for it to have changed this much. _

 

“I am sorry, Mick. I may not have trusted you on the ship with the team, but...

 

I was always, always coming back for you.”

 

He says it with aching truthfulness, like the love confession he'd never said. He says it both as an apology and as a question.

 

_ Here, mick. Here's the truth, that I care for you, that I always have. Now, what are you going to do with it? _

 

“Well it seems one of us lost track of time.”

 

Mick is unimpressed. That isn’t surprising; loving someone doesn’t mean much unless you treat them right. 

 

“How long did you?”

 

He hadn’t thought about the likelihood of survival when he’d dropped Mick off; it was immortal, and he could just time travel back to that exact moment, so it didn’t really matter anyways.

 

“By the time they found me, I had nearly lost my mind. I was strangling rats to survive.”

He’d forgotten that immortal didn’t mean immune. Often enough, immortality only meant that your suffering never ended.

 

He hadn’t thought it would matter. He hadn’t thought about how Mick would suffer until he picked it back up.

 

“When who found you?”

 

“The Time Masters. They took me to a place called the Vanishing Point. Time doesn't exist there the way it does on Earth. I've spent lifetimes being restored by them, training by them, fighting by them... being reborn.”

 

If what Rip tells them about the Time Masters is true, they didn’t just ask it nicely and help it practice fighting. No, Mick was probably tortured.

 

And Len left it. He did this to it, left Mick helpless, even knowing that the Time Masters were hunting the legends.

 

How can he fix this? Can he fix it?

 

“And, uh, when exactly did your new friends give you the, uh, lobotomy?”

 

The way Mick talks...it smacks of brainwashing. That would be the only way they could control it, Mick has never given in when tortured before.

 

“You think I was hunting you and your friends because the Time Masters made me? They barely had to ask.”

 

What can he say? Mick’s anger is righteous, it won’t be deflected. And Len is too prideful to beg for mercy. He can’t think through the haze of regret and fear. He can’t come up with any pretty words to slip out of this trap.

 

And really, he’d always known Mick would kill him. You can try to control a fire, but if it gets out, it is all consuming. He doesn’t expect a force of nature to have mercy on him.

 

“If you're gonna kill me just do it already.”

 

“I'm not gonna kill you. I'm gonna take a trip back to Central City and visit your baby sister. The beautiful thing about time travel is I get to kill her more than once. I can kill Lisa in front of you, go back in time, kill her in front of you again and again and again.”

 

Len freezes, then throws himself forwards, fruitlessly trying to get out of the cuffs. This betrayal is deeper than he could have imagined, the situation worse than anything he could have ever have thought up.

 

Mick, the one person he trusted, is going to kill Lisa. Not just kill her, torture her.

 

Suddenly, he feels like a kid again. 

 

His father, looming over lisa. He’d failed to distract him, failed to protect her.

 

But this time, it’s Mick towering over his sister.

 

He hadn’t really noticed how big Mick was before, how wide his shoulders were, how strong his arms were, how large his fists were, until he had to think about him hurting Lisa.

 

“Sir, several anomalies in the timeline suggest that the Waverider has touched down in Nanda Parbat.”

 

Mick grins at the computer, face hateful and unfamiliar.

 

“Chart a course. I used to think the most beautiful thing on Earth was fire. Now I know it's vengeance.”

 

Len doesn’t know whether to be relieved that Mick is distracted from Lisa, or afraid for the team.

 

Once the ship sets down, Mick storms past Len, heading to the gun rack further down the hallway.

 

“Would you mind loosening these up a little bit before you leave?”

 

Len, more desperate now than he ever was before, has regained his words. He has to either convince Mick, which seems unlikely, or escape.

 

“Just out of curiosity, what do you think your new masters are gonna do with you once you've delivered the team up to them? I don't expect there's a pension plan for old bounty hunters. Once they get what they want from you, they're gonna toss you aside.”

 

It’s the truth; Mick isn’t going to listen to emotion, but maybe it will listen to logic.

 

“Like you tossed me aside?”

 

He probably could have phrased that better. 

 

“You and I both made choices that led us to this moment. What matters, Mick, is your next move. And I'm willing to bet that some little piece of the old you is in that armor somewhere.”

  
In trying to backpedal, he’s accidentally put half of the blame on Mick. He’s too desperate, too afraid; his words are rushed and clumsy.

 

Mick puts the helmet back on. Len’s heart sinks.

 

“No. You're wrong.”

 

Mick leaves the ship, fully armed. It’s going to hunt down the legends, but he doesn't have time to worry about them right now.

 

He shuffles his way along the railing, hunched over. He reaches the end of the hallway, where he can reach the gun rack with his foot. It takes a couple tries, but he knocks his freeze gun onto the floor. 

 

He sits down, pushes it closer to him with his foot. He aims it at the cuffs before taking stock of his options. He could hit the post of the railing, which would embrittle the metal, but it still wouldn't be enough for him to break the post.

 

The cuffs are too tight for him to get his hands out of the way. The cold gun is an inexact weapon at the best of the times. 

 

He doesn't have a choice. He has to get out. He has to save Lisa.

 

He lies down, so that he can get the bulk of his body out of the way and still pull the trigger with his feet. He moves his left hand as far away from the right as possible.

 

He grits his teeth.

 

_ It's for Lisa. _

 

He pulls the trigger. 

 

The ice coats his skin and burrows in deep, at first a burning pain and then nothing.

 

He gasps, struggles to breath through the pain. He pulls himself up, so that he’s standing in a crouch again, his hand as far up as the railing will let it go. He stares at it, the now alien part of his body, gleaming blue-white. 

 

_ For Lisa. _

 

He swings his arm down, smashing it into the floor. It shatters, covering the floor in icy chunks of flesh. He screams, more out of reflex rather than actual pain. The nerves in his hand are long dead.

 

Looking at his own flesh, strewn across the floor like confetti, is making him sick to his stomach. He closes his eyes, tries to even out his breathing.

 

Then, he grabs the gun and runs from the ship. 

 

\---------

 

It is killing. Not the ones it wants to, not mate or mate-kin, but it is killing. It's using the blaster rifle the masters ordered him to. It wishes it could use its flame, or at least the heat gun.

 

But at least its killing. Assassins fall before the energy bolts; all their skill is helpless in the face of superior technology. As the last guard falls, the pain hits.

 

It has been feeling mate-traitor’s fear and anger through the mutilated link. It tells itself that it enjoys the feelings, tells itself that this is its rightful revenge. It tells itself that its head isn't spinning, that it isn't ill with what it's doing.

 

But then the pain starts. It recognizes that pain, the burn of its mate’s gun. But the cold isn't being used on it, it's been used on its mate. 

 

Traitor-mate is human, he can't resist the gun like Mick can. 

 

The pain grows, getting worse and worse. This isn't an accident; this is purposeful. 

 

Mick’s hand tingles, then goes numb. It always hates the cold, but feeling it this way, through the link, is a new type of pain.

 

Then the hand shatters. Its fingers seize and twitch, reacting to the amputation the traitor-mate just performed on himself. Mick howls, from the pain shooting up his arm and also from the shock.

 

It knew traitor-mate hated being trapped. It knew humans sometimes harm themselves to escape if they didn't have any other way out. 

 

But to feel it, to have it happen to its mate, to be the  _ cause of it _ , is very different than knowing.

 

Mick’s knocked out of its mind, out of the rules the masters made. For a moment, it feels again. 

 

It leans against the rock wall and tells itself that the regret it’s feeling is because it let a prisoner escape. That's all it is.

 

\------

 

In a strange replay of the scene in the engine room, his team is once again pointing weapons at his prone partner. 

 

Len struggles to think through the pain of his thawing, frostbitten stub. The team is on edge, and after Kronos killed Albus, he has no doubt that they'll kill Mick. At least, they'll try to.

 

If they try, what would happen? Would Mick actually die? Would Len die with him, when their link broke off? Would Mick survive but without human form? If it didn't have human form, would it be able to control its powers?

 

“Don't do it! Don't kill him.”

 

Rip turns to him and yells in that frantic, exasperated tone that always reminds Len of a high strung dog:

 

“Excuse me, Don't kill Kronos?”

 

“It's not Kronos. Show him.”

 

Mick doesn’t move. Len is forcefully reminded that it no longer listens to his orders. It listens only to the time masters and its lust for vengeance. Firestorm steps forwards and pulls off the helmet, revealing Mick to the team.

 

Rip speaks again, throaty and low, horror echoing in his voice:

 

“Oh god.”

 

Mick grins at him, a sarcastic, bitter smile. 

 

“There is no god.”

 

It lunges for the gun; Firestorm kicks it in the jaw, stopping it short and knocking it to the floor, unconscious.

 

\-------

 

The team brings Mick back onto the ship and locks it in the brig. Len wishes he could figure out how to explain why that’s such a terrible idea to them.

 

As long as Len is alive, and strong enough to keep the link stable, Mick’s powers are restrained; it’s only about as powerful as Firestorm.

 

But, if Len dies, whether that’s on a mission or because Mick escapes and kills him, then Mick’s powers will not be controlled. It may not even be able to control them, even if it wanted to.

 

If len dies, Mick will either have to choose a new mate from the available humans, the team, or become the world destroying monster it’s meant to be.

 

He can’t see the team being happy about either of those outcomes, and Mick doesn’t seem inclined to stop trying to murder Len. The safety of the team, and maybe the world, depends entirely on how secure the brig is.

 

Watching Mick pace around it, Len doesn’t feel very safe. It’s snarling at Rip:

 

“You think this is all over? I will kill every single one of you. I will watch you all burn!”

 

Then, it turns to Len:

 

“You... you should have killed me when you had the ch…” 

 

Rip mutes it, cutting off the sentence. It looks up at the cell, then turns and settles on the bench. The captain turns to Len.

 

“You owe us an explanation.”

 

Stein interrupts:

 

“Yes, it's quite remarkable. Mr. Rory is working for the Time Masters, considering you killed him.” 

 

“If you think back, I never actually said I killed him. “

 

“No, you just let us think that you did.”

 

The resentment returns as he remembers how quickly the team believed that he’d murdered his partner.

 

“I didn't have to try too hard, did I? Well, maybe I should have. And at least he wouldn't have ended up a chew toy for the Time Masters.”

 

Rip looks back into the cage, that gleam in his eye that means he’s making a plan.

 

“But if you did, we wouldn't have this opportunity to reform Mr. Rory.”

 

Len watches as the team all chime in with their support for the plan and, sometimes, kind words about Mick. Funny how nice the team will be once you’ve been tortured.

 

But he thinks of how dangerous Mick is, how if it gets free, it will kill Lisa. He thinks of it, on it’s time ship, telling him he should have killed it.

 

“It's a lost cause.”

 

“Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that. You will see that miracles abound on this old timeship.”

 

Len grits his teeth. The team has decided to keep Mick alive, and he’s not going to be able to kill it without their help; the link would knock him out if he started doing deadly harm to it. It seems he’s going to be dragged along by the team, whether or not he agreed with their foolish plan.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's pretty obvious that Len has PTSD from his childhood. I imagine being trapped would be at least somewhat triggering, so that's what's happening here, though Len doesn't really call it that.


End file.
